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Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.-- Bill Gates
Don't you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster.-- Terry Pratchett
The problem with reality is the lack of background music.
"Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much."
The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take.-- Roy Carlson
The law should make men free. The problem is making the law free.
Progress, n: The process through which the Internet has evolved from smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."-- Thomas Jefferson
2, 3, 3, 37 - the prime factorization of the beast.
Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.-- Goethe
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action.
You can't make a program without breaking some egos.
VB is very useful for allowing non programmers to prove they cant program.-- Druck
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."-- Theodore Rubin
Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.-- Ogden Nash
Dustin Pons, an American high-school student who attended a Soviet school for three weeks, as quoted in the New York Times: "American teenagers are more socially advanced. For instance, in their free time Soviets would rather read a book or walk in the park or play the piano. American teenagers would probably go out and watch TV, go to a movie, or something more actively inclined." ("The Progressive")
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid.
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.-- Oscar Wilde
"I am not part of the problem; I am a Republican."-- Dan Quayle
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions. It's the only way to make progress.-- Havelock Vetinari
You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you are making progress.-- Malcolm X
More to be feared than ignorance is the pretense of knowledge.
Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Lecture, n: Where the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either one.
"The Prophets teach us patience."
-- Vedek Bareil
"It appears they also teach you politics."-- Sisko (Star Trek: DS9)
The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.-- Chinese Proverb
"The problem with post-modernism is that you like it more if you're innumerate or illiterate; both is best."-- Graydon
Only the good die young. Note the average age in Congress.
The Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm:
1. Write down the problem.
2. Think very hard.
3. Write down the answer.
"Microsoft is not the problem. Microsoft is the symptom."-- Eric S. Raymond
The principle difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.
He was just... well, like a lot of madmen. Somewhat accurate view of the problem, really insane view of the solution. (Kid Radd)
Half of the people in the world are below average.
Aftermath, n: The period following algebra.
"It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution."-- Oscar Wilde
"We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles."-- Mark Twain
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.-- George Bernard Shaw
And the pickles frolicked with the waffles, joyously.
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
If god meant for us to program, he's a sadist.-- Rob Earhart
Be the person you needed when you were younger.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are people who want crops without ploughing the ground.-- Frederick Douglass
"We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things."-- Marcel Proust
"The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself."-- Thomas Szasz
Remember, "y'all" is singular. "All y'all" is plural. "All y'all's" is plural possessive.
If you put a million monkeys at a million keyboards, one of them will eventually write a Java program.
The rest of them will write Perl programs.
"I'm not mad at the world... just at all the people in it."
"The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
"The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are."-- Mark Twain
"Well, to be fair I did have a couple of gadgets he probably didn't, like a teaspoon and an open mind."-- The Doctor
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.-- Larry Wall
If it wasn't for the optimist the pessimist would never know how happy he isn't.
I do not think that any civilization can be called complete until it has progressed from sophistication to unsophistication, and made a conscious return to simplicity of thinking and living.-- Lin Yutang
I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.
"Fast, fat computers breed slow, lazy programmers."-- Robert Hummel
"The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it."-- P. B. Medawar
Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies:
As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Innovation is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure.-- Albert Einstein
"All the people stared as if we were both quite insane."-- The Hollies
"The first 80% of software development is the easy part. The hard part is the next 80%"
Feature, n: A surprising property of a program. Occasionally documented. To call a property a feature sometimes means the author did not consider that case, and the program makes an unexpected, though not necessarily wrong response. See BUG. ``That's not a bug, it's a feature!'' A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.-- Steven Wright
"The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs."-- Joseph Weizenbaum
"In corporate religions as in others, the heretic must be cast out not because of the probability that he is wrong but because of the possibility that he is right."-- Antony Jay
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.-- Noam Chomsky
Answer the phone naked. Callers will hear it in your voice.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
Lunatic Asylum, n: The place where optimism most flourishes.
Murphy's Eleventh Law of Computing:
A computer program will follow your orders, but rarely your intentions.
"The degree of normality in a database is inversely proportional to that of its DBA"
Government of the people
By a corrupt subset of the people
For the people who can afford the corrupt subset of the people.
-- Chris Newport
In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.-- Groucho Marx
javalin: Unwieldy spear with poor flight characteristics and excessive weight. Due to its poor ballistics, it is usually used to stab a programming project through the heart until dead.-- Charles Shannon Hendrix
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.-- Harry S. Truman
"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."-- G. K. Chesterton
America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, what happens when you run out of ink?
"You just realize you're not on Happy Days. It's the real world; You need to ignore what you are programmed by sitcoms to think your life should be."-- Trent Reznor
"The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality."-- Oscar Wilde
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.-- Elizabeth Taylor
The problem isn't that the victim can't fight, the problem is that they have to. Saying that self-defense classes are the answer to gay bashers is like saying that it would be good if the government stopped prosecuting rape cases and used the money saved to hand out free mace.-- Richard Caley
Given the pace of technology, I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside. (Calvin & Hobbes)
Study the past, if you would divine the future.-- Confucius
Is not that the nature of men and women--that the pleasure is in the learning of each other?
Real Programmers never work from 9 to 5. If any real programmer is around at 9 a.m., it's because they were up all night.-- Some computer geek
"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager asked her mother.
"Encouragement, dear..." she replied.
Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
One of the problems with learning that many teachers fail to see is that until you really understand something, any argument made out of that understanding context tends to be pretty useless.
"The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words." (Atlanta Journal)
"The worst thing about censorship is [deleted by censorship bereau]."
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future.
Never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
That's what friendship means: sharing the prejudice of experience.-- Charles Bukowski
If the pen is mightier than the sword then how can actions speak louder than words?
All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.-- Samuel Butler
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.-- Oscar Wilde
Vizzini: Inconceivable.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. (The Princess Bride)
Brought to you by the people who made "out of context" a household word.
"We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists ... in the loved one, perfection."-- Sidney Poitier
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are software.-- Richard P. Brennan
Nerb, n: a noun used as a verb. For example: ''They didn't language the proclamation very well''. nerb, nerbing, nerbed v. the act of using nouns as verbs in a sentence.-- Rich Hill
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he would spend two years campaigning and organizing for it should not be trusted with the office.
"Man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road."-- Alexander Smith
The Pet Principle:
No matter which side of the door your dog or cat is on, it is the wrong side.
Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is the presence of a system for resolving conflicts before war becomes necessary. War never creates peace.
There's a common component of scientific thought which says that a) if you're not a convicted Scientist then you can't get involved in discussions about Science and b) Science is all about Progress and means that things will always get better if Scientists are in Control.-- Neil Lewis
BASIC, n.:
A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
"The thing that I'm into is the philosophy of the music. I love the surprise of things, the accidents--just the sound of a word, to try to express them in the best way, so that the emotion is totally revealed."-- Beth Gibbons
There are three sorts of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.-- Oscar Wilde
Don't you think that with the proper amount of manpower, pliers, ropes, belts and duct tape, you actually COULD lead a horse to water AND make it drink?-- Andy Overman
The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.-- David Friedman
Recursive, adj: See Recursive.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.-- Rich Cook
"Mom and dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in. But every time I do, they tell me to stop it." (Calvin & Hobbes)
The ballast of factual information, so far from being just about to sink us, is growing daily less. The factual burden of a science varies inversely with its degree of maturity. As a science advances, particular facts are comprehended within, and therefore in a sense annihilated by, general statements of steadily increasing explanatory power and compass--whereupon the facts need no longer be known explicitly, that is, spelled out and kept in mind. In all sciences we are being progressively relieved of the burden of singular instances, the tyranny of the particular. We need no longer record the fall of every apple.-- Peter Medawar ("Pluto's Republic")
In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."
The business of the mind is first and foremost the pure joy of knowing and comprehending, the pure joy of consciousness.-- Anais Nin
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.-- Thomas Jefferson
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog."-- Mark Twain
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
-Ashleigh Brilliant
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."-- James D. Nicoll
Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."-- Anatole France
The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while Nature cures the disease.-- Voltaire
"I'd like to meet the person who invented sex and see what they're working on now."
"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit."-- Maugham
The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.-- Mark Twain
"If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity."
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.-- Goethe
[Perl] isn't a programming language, it's a thousand special case rules flying in close formation.-- Peter da Silva
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."-- Mark Twain
"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."-- Louis Kronenberger
"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone."-- Henrik Ibsen
"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."-- Frank Herbert
"Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month."-- Wernher von Braun
"The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience."
"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."-- Claude Adrien Helvetius
The experience of programming Windows vs the experience of programming NeXTStep is like going to the dentist and having a root canal without anaesthetic vs going to the dentist and having your gums cleaned with some nitrous oxide thrown in for the entertainment side of things.-- Bill Bumgarner
"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it."
A wolf in sheeps clothing needs professional help.
"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good."-- Robert Graves
"[Men, particularly in the British press] come in asking me why I'm so agressive and why I hate them, and, and, what they don't understand with this record is that it's about incredible passion and incredible desire and incredible need and then, love. It's all gotta be in there if you're being fair about it."-- Tori Amos
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.-- James Branch Cabell
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
The primary difference between a man and a woman is that a man gets his self-esteem when a woman says "yes" and a woman gets hers when she says "no". (Amy's Orgasm)
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.-- Maurice Wilkes
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.-- Anais Nin
You're probably the sort who would have Dorothy arrested for throwing water on the Wicked Witch of the West.-- Eric Holeman
The applied mathematician can find the solution to any difficulty, whilst the pure mathematician can find the difficulty to any solution.
I love stress because it's a whole lot better than depression.-- Drew Olbrich
"Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away."-- Goethe
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.-- Edsger Dijkstra
"The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular."-- Edward Gibbon
"Must... defy... laws... of... physics!"-- The Tick
"Don't be afraid to go after what you want to do, and what you want to be. But don't be afraid to be willing to pay the price."-- Lane Frost
"Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent."
I once talked a guy out of blowing up the Sears tower, but I can't talk my wife out of the bathroom or my daughter off the phone. (The Negotiator)
Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved; the pig was committed.
In a cemetery:
"Persons are prohibited from picking flowers from any but their own graves."
You probably go to museums and complain that Monet pressed down too hard with his crayons because the picture is all bumpy.-- John Woods
Stand and fight, you misbegotten spawn of the perverse breeding between a pixie and a squirrel!
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."-- Mark Twain
The UNIX system has a command, 'nice', which allows a user to voluntarily reduce the priority of his process, in order to be nice to other users. Nobody ever uses it.-- Andy Tanenbaum
There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.-- Bjarne Stroustrup
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.-- George Bernard Shaw
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."-- Theodore Roosevelt
"The way I play is a bit torturous but... it's the only way I know how to play."-- Tori Amos
He who laughs last probably didn't understand the joke.
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."-- Hemingway
"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions."-- Susan Sontag
...postmodernity, once the plaything of smarty-pants French guys, in truth belongs to the engagingly stupid. (Newsweek)
Arthur C. Clarke's Law :
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
In order to become the master the politician poses as the servant.-- Charles De Gaulle
The voters have spoken, the bastards...
"Do not bend the spoon, instead realize the truth."
"The truth?"
"That the spoon effect will be added later by some sort of SGI workstation."
In a church bulletin: This evening at 7 P.M. there will be a hymn sing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
The public seems incapable of distinguishing between your garden variety idiot and your genuine lunatic. It is the same confusion the public has had over the last five Presidents.-- Mark Leeper
"County library? Reference desk, please. Hello? Yes, I need a word definition. Well, that's the problem. I don't know how to spell it and I'm not allowed to say it. Could you just rattle off all the swear words you know and I'll stop you when...Hello??" (Calvin & Hobbes)
"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."-- Mark Twain
If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.-- Dorothy Parker
As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.-- Noam Chomsky
In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.-- Tom Szasz
"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion."-- Scott Adams
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb-assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
"Ah," said the president [Reagan] with great lucidity, "It's true we shipped weapons to Iran, but they were defensive weapons."
If the man had a brain, he'd play with it.-- Molly Ivins
An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.-- Don Marquis
Television: the bland leading the bland.
As the main says, it has yet to be proven intelligence has any survival value.
Whether it deserves some respect is another matter.
Occam's eraser: The philosophical principle that even the simplest solution is bound to have something wrong with it.
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."-- Blair P. Houghton
"When the people fear their government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."-- Thomas Jefferson
"Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals."-- Henry Spencer
"The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums."-- Peter De Vries
The bigger they are, the harder they hit.
"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."-- Michael Sinz
Fortress: a female fort.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was "aardvark".
"The more I watch television, the more I wonder why I'm not already supreme ruler of Earth."-- Dogbert (Dilbert)
"There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind."-- Marcel Proust
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.-- Goethe
The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and then offers a "solution" (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy "protection"--or else!"-- Domald Morgan
"The most merciful thing in the world...is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."-- H.P. Lovecraft
"The computer world is like a great big toy store. But all the toys are broken."-- Steve Witham
"Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely-read man never quotes accurately for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely."-- Hesketh Pearson
"We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person, perfectly."
To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, your're overdoing it.-- J. Jenkins
Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.-- Oscar Levant
Pedaeration, n: Achieving the perfect body heat by having one leg under the sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."-- John Gilmore
Beauty lies in the hands of the beer holder.
May you get to Heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you're dead.-- Irish Proverb
"The shortest distance between two points is under construction."-- Noelie Alito
"Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.-- Spiro T. Agnew
"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness."-- Eric Sevareid
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.-- E. B. White
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.-- Ambassador Kosh
"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture"-- Bumper sticker
"The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions."-- Maurice Chapelain
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
"The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason."-- Bertrand Russell
"The imposition of stigma is the commonest form of violence used in democratic societies."-- R. A. Pinker
C, n.: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't.-- Ray Simard
I'm extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
"The country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there."-- Edouard Manet
"The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."-- Aldous Huxley
Of all the truths in the world, humor is the most satisfying and often the healthiest.
"Remember the Golden Rule: Those who have the gold make the rules."
I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.-- Mark Twain
"[Re: extinction of species, and the desperate need to blame someone]
> There are 3,500 species of ant.
Today. To the best of our knowledge. How many were there before the great Hexapodia Race Wars three thousand years ago, when the Better Red Than Dead Alliance destroyed the Polka-Dot League, slaughtering thousands of billions of thinking, feelering individuals in an act of genocide unmatched since the K-T event when the Brontosaurus' attempt at a space program using their largest-ever catapult went horribly wrong?"
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.-- Samuel Johnson
Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.-- Horace Walpole
The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump.
There has been opposition to every innovation in the history of man, with the possible exception of the sword.-- Benjamin Dana
Being in a nudist colony probably takes all the fun out of Halloween.
I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.-- Lily Tomlin
The BeOS takes the best features from the major operating systems. It's got the power and flexibility of Unix, the interface and ease of use of the MacOS, and Minesweeper from Windows.-- Tyler Riti
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished."-- Goethe
Notice in a hotel lobby in Bucharest:
"The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable."
"The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."-- Robert Frost
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."-- Mark Twain
A bird in the hand is the best way to eat chicken.
"The fickleness of the women whom I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me."-- George Bernard Shaw
"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."-- Friedrick Nietzsche
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."-- Stephen King
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."-- Ben Franklin
Hermits have no peer pressure.
"The first thing to remember about Unix is that nothing is ever spelled correctly."-- Steve Lidie
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."-- Walter Bagehot
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the parties.
The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be limited to, the following. The party of the first part shall, with or without elevation at his or her option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered non-negotiable. Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes. Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part shall have the option of beginning installation. Aforesaid installation shall occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable. The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership.
"The stone age was marked by man's clever use of crude tools; the information age, to date, has been marked by man's crude use of clever tools."
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
"The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."-- Horace Walpole
"The biggest disease today isn't leprosy or tuberculosis, but the feeling of being unwanted."-- Mother Theresa
Monday is the root of all evil.
Rhetorical subtlety doesn't work on people with the perceptive powers of an eggplant.-- Spencer Sun
"The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it."-- Doug Larson
Recession: your friend loses his job. Depression: you lose your job. Recovery: Bush loses his job.-- Bill Davidsen
Beepilepsy, n: Aflicts those with vibrating pagers characterized by sudden spasms, goofy facial expressions and loss of speech
"All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies [government by the masses] are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people."-- Oscar Wilde
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves but wiser people are full of doubts.-- Bertrand Russell
Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.-- Oscar Wilde
Law of diminishing IQ:
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.
"We apologize for the error in last week's paper in which we stated that Mr. Arnold Dogbody was a defective in the police force. We meant, of course, that Mr. Dogbody is a detective in the police farce." (Correction Notice in the Ely Standard)
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
When someone mentions "the City" in my presence, I usually interpret it to mean exciting Charlton, Ontario (pop. 200, including cows). Anyone who uses expressions so vague deserves to be misinterpreted on a biblical scale.-- Brian Jarvis
Q: Why did the germ cross the microscope?
A: To get to the other slide.
The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield.-- Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)
"The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands."-- Alexander Penney
"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn."-- David Russell
"In each of us are places where we have never gone. Only by pressing the limits do you ever find them."-- Dr. Joyce Brothers
"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to be insane in such a useful way that they can't commit you."-- Mark Edwards
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.-- Plato
Q. What's the difference between an aerobics instructor and a well-mannered professional torturer?
A. The torturer would apologize first.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."-- Lucille Ball
"All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway."-- Harry S. Truman
Abnormal, adj:
Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.-- Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
The more we disagree, the bigger the chance that at least one of us is right.
I think that Vulcan is a geekocracy where the people who know the most about sci-fi get to rule.-- <br />
Keith Irwin
Grammar is not a vice (though excessive picking at it can be). And nonstandard words/grammar can be used to good effect--but no one can do that without knowing how they're deviating.-- Randy Clark
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its de-evolution into the shiny things network.-- The Onion
I think the strangest (or, perhaps, at least the most inappropriate) conversation I've ever had during sex with anyone was a long discussion (punctuated by the obvious noises) of analytic means of setting a bound on the primality of generalised Fibonacci numbers.-- Kay Dekker
The future exists first in the imagination, then in the will, then in reality.
Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.-- Ashleigh Brilliant
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, let the machine get it.
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
"A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity."-- Robert Frost
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
I like the kind of people that can hold on to the the feeling they have after the song or movie ends.
Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table.-- The Anarchist Cookbook
"If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas."-- Harold Abelson
All esoteric teachings seek to apprehend the unseen happenings in the psyche, and all claim supreme authority for themselves.-- Carl Jung
The disarmament of fear, in ourselves and those that oppose, propels us. Every step forward brings the possibility of backlash. But forward we go.-- David G. Welton
"The main differences between a computer salesman and a used car salesman is that the used car salesman can probably drive and knows when he's lying."-- Peter da Silva
You have to get with the program. People raised in the era of books are out to pasture, did they forget to tell you? Knowledge used to be a lacework of connections; now it's a motley of facts. Doing is valued; knowing is devalued: after all, you can look it up, so why bother actually knowing anything? Don't waste your precious productivity on the Big Picture; that'll just get in your way as you frantically race toward Right Now and What Counts. After all, all you can do with a free mind is get into mischief, so no more whining after printed pages; the future is help screens!-- Jess Anderson
Those who speak by the yard and think by the inch should be kicked by the foot.
"The I.S.O. standard unit of female pulchritude is the milli-Helen. This is the amount of beauty capable of causing the launching of a single ship."-- Terry Pratchett
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."-- Robert R. Coveyou
"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken."-- Samuel Johnson
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.-- H. L. Mencken
Beware the fury of a patient woman.
The light at the end of a tunnel may be an oncoming train.
Funny. All the wireless people seem to be the marionettes.
"The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they will believe they are as clever as he."-- Karl Kraus
The future ain't what it used to be.
"I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves."-- August Strindberg
"The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but still 'tis nonsense."-- Benjamin Franklin
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it.